The Governor's wife

by Mark Gimenez

  " Daddy! "

  The plate glass window above them exploded. Bode lunged for Becca and covered her under the table as glass and bullets sprayed the restaurant. Diners in the lower section screamed and cried out and dove under their tables and booths. Waiters dropped serving trays and scrambled out of the line of fire; dishes and glasses crashed to the floor. It sounded like a war movie. But Bode knew it was real. Because Hank lay next to them, blood streaming from bullet holes in his face and chest. He was gone. But the gunfire was not. Bullets bit into the walls and sliced through light fixtures and cut wood support posts into splinters. Jim Bob was unhurt and under his table, punching 911 on his phone. But the police wouldn't arrive in time.

  "Stay down!"

  Bode reached over and yanked Hank's weapon out of his holster. It was a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a fifteen-round clip. He grabbed Hank's spare clip then clicked the safety off and chambered a round and waited for a pause in the shooting, when the men had run through their clips and had to reload. The gunfire lasted less than fifteen seconds, but it seemed like an hour. Then it stopped.

  They were reloading.

  Bode knelt up and saw two men standing in the middle of the street holding assault weapons. They were no more than twenty feet outside the restaurant. They had ejected spent clips and were inserting new ones. He stood and aimed the pistol center mass and fired. He hit both men in the chest three times each, dropping them.

  "Don't move, Becca!"

  He climbed through the blown-out window and walked to the men; broken glass crunched under his boots. One moved; Bode shot him again. Twice. Bode approached a black SUV angled across Guadalupe Street; a dark figure moved in the driver's seat. He aimed and fired through the windshield. Five times. He ejected the spent clip and snapped in the spare just as a man fell out of the vehicle with an AK-47; Bode shot him six times before he could fire his weapon. He heard sirens in the distance. He checked that the SUV was empty then walked back through air thick with gunpowder. He looked through the open window at Becca.

  "Are you hurt?"

  She shook her head, but she wasn't looking at Bode. She was staring at Darcy, who lay motionless on the floor with her eyes open and a bullet hole in her forehead.

  Angel Salinas was a charter member of Mayor Gutierrez's Mexican Mafia. He had driven the two hundred thirty-five miles from Austin to Laredo just to interview Jesse Rincon.

  "Doctor," Salinas said, "you could beat the governor-"

  His cell phone rang. He checked the number.

  "It's my office." He punched the button and answered. "Angel… What?… When?… Shit!.. I'm leaving now."

  He disconnected but stared at his phone a moment. Then he looked up at Jesse.

  "They killed the governor. His daughter, too."

  He ran off. Jesse turned in a circle searching for the governor's wife.

  "They missed. We're both okay."

  Lindsay Bonner breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Thank God."

  She had called Bode's cell phone. Her husband and her daughter had survived an assassination attempt. But Bode did not speak. There was more.

  "What is it?"

  He exhaled into the phone.

  "They killed Hank and Darcy."

  She felt her legs start to give way.

  "Oh, God. No."

  "I'm sending the jet to Laredo. You're coming home, Lindsay."

  " Sicarios," DEA Agent Rey Gonzales said to the governor of Texas. "Hit men."

  Austin police, Texas Rangers, state troopers, and FBI and DEA agents now swarmed Guadalupe Street outside the restaurant called Kerbey's. The street was blocked off from traffic, and police barricades and cruisers cordoned off the crime scene from the reporters and cameras. People shouted, emergency lights flashed, and blood stained the governor's clothes.

  "Hit men?"

  Rey nodded. "Each cartel has a sicario unit. In-house assassins. Ex-military and law enforcement, hired out to the cartels."

  "And they're here in America?"

  "FBI's got an entire task force devoted just to Mexican sicarios working in the U.S. They just killed a stockbroker up in New York named Ronald Richey."

  "He was into drugs?"

  "Investment banking. Enrique de la Garza-we tagged him 'El Diablo'-he's the head of Los Muertos, he invested a billion with Richey, blamed him for losing half in subprime mortgages."

  "So he killed the guy?"

  "Bullet through his brain." Rey gestured at the dead Mexicans sprawled across Guadalupe Street. "Standard payment for a U.S. assassination is fifty grand cash plus two kilos of cocaine, worth three hundred grand on the street. We found two hundred grand cash and ten kilos of coke in their vehicle. El Diablo, he put a premium on your head. He wants you dead, Governor."

  "Because we found his marijuana?"

  "Because you killed his son."

  " His son? "

  "One of those Mexicans you killed on the ranch, he was El Diablo's first-born son. Jesus de la Garza, nineteen years old."

  Rumors had been percolating on the border that El Diablo had sent a team of sicarios into Texas. Rey knew the target had to be the governor. So he had taken it upon himself to come to Austin and warn the governor. He had arrived in town that morning, too late to save the Ranger and the girl. The governor and his daughter were just lucky.

  "Who does this guy think he is, the godfather?"

  "Governor, El Diablo makes the godfather look like a middle-school bully. The broker, that was business. This is personal."

  The governor turned to the bodies of the Texas Ranger and the college girl and his daughter sobbing in Mr. Burnet's arms. Then he turned back to Rey.

  "You goddamn right it's personal."

  The governor of Texas stood in front of a cluster of microphones set up in the parking lot. He faced a dozen television cameras but pointed at the crime scene.

  "This is what happens when a sovereign nation can't control its own borders. When it won't control its own borders because of politics. People die."

  "Governor," a reporter said, "The FBI says these men were professional killers. They staked you out, knew your daily routine. They knew where to find you. Aren't you afraid El Diablo will make another attempt on your life?"

  Bode Bonner stared into the cameras.

  "I'm not afraid of the devil himself."

  "Oh, you should be, Governor. You should be very afraid."

  Enrique de la Garza once loved the game of beisbol more than life itself. He loved the smell of the grass and his leather glove and the feel of the wood bat in his hands. He had the glove and the arm but not the bat to play in the American majors. So his playing days had ended but not his love for the game. On the shelf in his office, he maintained a costly collection of baseballs autographed by the legends of the game. He often imagined autographing baseballs for fans before games in Boston; he went to many Red Sox games while at Harvard and often dreamed of playing shortstop at Fenway Park. He now picked up the Ted Williams ball and threw it as hard as he could at the image on the television of the Anglo he now hated more than any man before. He turned to Hector Garcia but pointed a finger at the shattered screen.

  "I want that man dead. I want his head on my desk."

  He took a deep breath to get his blood pressure under control. He calmed and assessed the damage.

  "Ask Julio to go online and order another television."

  TWENTY-TWO

  Hank Williams was buried two days later, and Darcy Daniels three. Governor Bode Bonner stood between his wife and daughter as Darcy's casket was lowered into the ground. Becca buried her face in his chest and cried until his shirt was wet. Roped-off barricades manned by Texas Rangers and state troopers kept the crowd back. Security was tight, but television cameras captured every moment. Lindsay Bonner wore a black dress, a black hat, and a black veil.

  Enrique de la Garza watched the funeral on the television. Even in the veil, something about the governor's wife seemed vaguely fami
liar, as if he had seen her before. But like a dream he could not fully recall, he could not place her. He turned back to his abogado but pointed at the screen.

  "They bury their people. I want to bury my son."

  "Enrique," his lawyer said, "during the last month I have exhausted every possible avenue-diplomatic channels through the American consulate, every political connection I have here and in the U.S., the church… I even called the local sheriff in Fort Davis and offered compensation. But he refused. The Americans, they will not release his body. And they probably have moved the body by now, to El Paso or perhaps Austin." He gestured at the television. "And trying to kill the governor, that did not help matters."

  Felix Montemayor had once served as attorney general of Mexico. Born into an aristocratic family in Guadalajara, he had attended college at Stanford and law school at Yale. He had pursued a political career long enough to become connected and then a lucrative career in private law; he now enjoyed a more lucrative career as Enrique's personal lawyer. The press had dubbed him el abogado del Diablo. The devil's advocate. Enrique slid the satellite phone across the desk to his lawyer.

  "Get him on the phone."

  "The governor?"

  "The sheriff."

  Felix found the number in his briefcase then dialed. He put the phone to his ear. After a moment, he said, "Sheriff Roscoe Lee, please. Felix Montemayor calling."

  Enrique gestured for the phone. He took it and waited for the sheriff to answer. A slow Texas drawl came across the line from four hundred miles away.

  "This here's Sheriff Lee. Mr. Montemayor-"

  "No, Sheriff. This is Enrique de la Garza."

  The phone went silent, but he could hear breathing.

  "You know who I am, Sheriff?"

  "I do."

  "And you know what I want?"

  "I reckon so."

  "One million dollars, Sheriff. Cash. For my son's body. I can wire the money anywhere in the world you would like."

  "But I live here. In Fort Davis, Texas."

  "Then I will give you the money there."

  There was a long pause and then a heavy sigh.

  "Well, I don't know what the hell I'd do with a million dollars anyway, Mr. de la Garza. Guess I'll pass."

  "Sheriff, are you a father?"

  "I am."

  "Then you must understand my desire to bury my son in a proper Catholic service?"

  "I do. But I can't let go of the body without the state boys and the Feds giving their okay, and that just ain't gonna happen, 'specially after you just tried to kill the governor. Some folks take offense at that sort of thing. So your boy is just gonna have to sit in my freezer a while longer."

  Enrique ended the call and looked at his lawyer.

  "His body is still there."

  "This one of those unforeseen, unexpected, unpleasant moments?"

  Jim Bob turned to the insurance policy named Eddie Jones and nodded.

  "But not the kind I figured on."

  "You want me to bodyguard the boss from now on?"

  Jim Bob shook his head. "From what I hear, you're a little quick on the trigger."

  "Maybe. But I never lost a client."

  "We brought in more Rangers, SWAT guys carrying more than pistols."

  "Good. 'Cause they'll be back."

  "Bode killed them."

  "There'll be more."

  "I knew that was his son," Lindsay said. "Now he wants revenge."

  "Which is why you can't go back to the border. It's not safe, Lindsay. He might come after you."

  "No one down there knows who I am. In the colonias, I'm just a nurse."

  "What about Becca? This hit her hard."

  "I'll stay until she's ready to go back to school. She needs a bodyguard."

  The Governor's Mansion looked like a scene out of The Godfather after the war between the Mafia families had begun; armed guards patrolled the perimeter and spotters with rifles stood on the roof. Ranger Roy loitered thirty feet away. He apparently had decided not to let the governor's wife out of his sight this time, and he hadn't since she had returned to Austin. She had been gone a month, the longest she had ever been apart from her husband. She had embraced Bode when she had first returned to the Mansion, but not since. She still slept on the day bed. Even nearly getting killed couldn't bring his wife back to their bed. Even though he had banished Mandy to the governor's office in the State Capitol. They now sat outside on the bench facing the south lawn. They had returned from the funeral but had not gone inside the Mansion. They sat close, but he knew better than to touch her.

  "It's good to have you back."

  "I'm not back."

  "You ever coming back? For good?"

  "I don't know."

  "You're leaving your family for a bunch of Mexicans in the colonias? "

  "You left me for Mandy."

  "After you moved out of our bedroom."

  "I don't want to do this, Bode. Not now."

  Bode stared out at the green grass and the blue sky above. Hank and Darcy were gone, and his wife wanted to be.

  "I need you, Lindsay."

  She sighed heavily, almost a cry.

  "You don't need me, Bode Bonner. You just need a first lady."

  "When will the senora return?" Inez said from her desk by the door.

  "I do not know."

  "But she will return?"

  "I do not know."

  But he knew she would never return.

  Jesse had driven her to the airport three days before. When she got out of his truck, he knew he would never see her again. That day had come. She had left him. And he had learned the answer to his question: It was better to have never loved than to have loved and lost.

  "I miss her," Inez said.

  "I loved her."

  Lindsay embraced her daughter.

  "I know, honey."

  "Why didn't he save her? Daddy."

  "He would have if he could. He would have stood in front of her, taken the bullet himself. Your father is a lot of things, Becca, but he's no coward."

  "I'm scared."

  "You don't have to be, not with your father here. He'll protect you."

  "I wish we were back on the ranch."

  "I wish we had never left the ranch."

  "Mom… are you guys getting a divorce?"

  " A divorce? No… I don't think so… I don't know."

  "Do you have someone else?"

  "No."

  Jesse didn't count as someone else, did he?

  "Does Dad?"

  Yes.

  "No."

  She couldn't do that to her daughter.

  "Then why are you living down on the border?"

  "To do something good with my life."

  "He's going to be president."

  "That's his life, not mine."

  "You won't be able to work on the border, when he's president. You won't be able to hide your face anywhere in the world then."

  For the first time in five years, Jesse Rincon contemplated leaving the colonias. His time with the governor's wife opened up all the possibilities of life for him. Perhaps the time had come for him to live beyond the wall. Perhaps the time had come for him to make a different choice in life. The thought of being alone the rest of his life now seemed unbearable. He wanted a woman in his life. He wanted the governor's wife in his life. But it was not to be.

  "She is gone, Mother."

  Jesse brushed dirt from the small flat stone that marked his mother's grave in the colonia cemetery. GRACIANA RINCON… 1952–1973.

  "But it is for the best. This border is no place for such a woman. Dirt and death, that is all the borderlands have to offer. A woman such as her, she belongs in Austin, or perhaps Washington. Yes, she will make a fine first lady."

  "When Governor Bode Bonner shot and killed three Mexican cartel soldados in West Texas and rescued thirteen Mexican children from a marijuana farm, he became an American hero. But when he grabbed his dead Texas Ranger bodyguard's g
un and shot and killed three Mexican hit men- sicarios, they are called-saving his daughter's life and the lives of dozens of diners in this restaurant in the middle of Austin, Texas, he became an American legend. A living legend. The only question is, with a Mexican drug lord gunning for him, how long will he remain living? Reporting from Austin, Texas."

  Jim Bob switched channels from network to network to network to catch the evening news reports. One reporter stood in the middle of Guadalupe Street just outside Kerbey's restaurant; another stood just across the street on the UT campus; and a third stood in the parking lot. All were reporting live from Austin, Texas, as they had for the last three days. The national media had descended on the capital of Texas.

  "How did the hit men smuggle the weapons into the U.S.?" the reporter asked DEA Agent Rey Gonzales.

  "They didn't. The gun laws in Mexico are very strict. So they crossed into the U.S. at Laredo, drove up I-35 to San Antonio, and bought the guns and ammo at a gun show last weekend. The cartels buy all their guns in Texas."

  "Fully automatic AK-47s with thirty-round magazines?"

  "You can buy a bazooka at a gun show."

  "Without a criminal background check?"

  The agent nodded. "The 'gun show loophole.' Big enough to drive a semi through. The bad guys buy their guns at gun shows and missiles on the black market."

  "Missiles?"

  "El Diablo, he bought a Russian-made missile and shot down our Predator drone."

  "A drug lord shot down our drone? I can't believe that."

  "You'd better believe it."

  "Agent Gonzales, do you think the governor's life is still in danger?"

  Another nod. "The governor killed El Diablo's son. He won't quit."

  "How can you ensure the governor's safety?"

  "We can't."

  Jim Bob muted the news and turned to Bode with a big grin.

  "Do you know how lucky you are?"

  "Not getting killed?"

  "Getting this kind of press coverage? Favorable pieces on the networks for a Republican?"

  The Professor opened his black notebook.

  "This poll was conducted after the assassination attempt. The more Mexicans you kill, the higher your poll numbers go. Seventy-six percent total favorable… unbelievable. White males, ninety-one percent. White females, eighty-four. African-Americans, forty-three percent. Hispanics… get this… thirty-nine percent."